We arrived in Hangzhou by regular train in the evening, 12 hours later than I had originally planned. We were tired and cold, but the hotel that I booked was not too far away. We noticed immediately that Hangzhou was a very different city from Suzhou. It was hustling and bustling with mostly a younger crowd. We took the metro from the railway station to get to our hotel. The metro looked newer and more modern with lights on the station map. It's still nothing compared to Japan's trains but this is already pretty good. It also surprised me a bit that in the metro Miss Kiki got offered seats not just once but several times. She almost always decline the offer but these gestures were not something I had expected to find in China...
I had booked Ren He Hangzhou Hotel via Trip.com as it wasn't available at Agoda or Traveloka. The price was good compared to booking directly on the hotel's website. However, our booking only held my reservation until 8 pm and we had arrived 26 minutes later because of our train situation. They had let go one of the rooms I reserved and they only had 1 King and 1 Twin left and the twin room was slightly more expensive. We decided to take the rooms and finally checked in.
The hotel felt quite clean and nice, and they provided very nice chrysanthemum tea along with the regular teas. The location was very good, as it was closer to the West Lake than I expected! Their breakfast was cheap but to me it was not a very good one so if I ever go there again I wouldn't eat breakfast there.
We ventured out to find dinner but at that time a lot of places were either closed or closing. As we walked it started snowing. It was just our luck, because all the websites I checked in preparation for this trip said it very rarely snows in Suzhou and Hangzhou. Not even guaranteed to happen every year, and if it does it would be just for a day or two. What were the chances that we were there on the very two days that it snowed in Suzhou and Hangzhou? I bet you it was the Winnipeggers travelling with me who brought it with them! :D
Right behind the hotel we passed a small restaurant and I suggested that we ate there. Everyone was tired and cold so we all agreed. We couldn't speak nor read their menu so we ended up pointing at pictures on the wall... without really knowing exactly what they were.
We bought a small bottle of alcohol, and everyone who tasted it said it was horrible... Miss Kiki said it's banana flavour. No, she didn't taste it but she read one of the characters on the bottle that said banana apparently.
The food turned out to be very very good! What we thought was beef with beans turned out to be beef with green chilli which was super delicious.
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| Beef with green chilli |
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| Mapo tofu |
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| Pork |
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| Pork with mushroom |
It was very late after dinner and we retired immediately. In the morning we set out to the famous West Lake and walked around the area. I will have a separate post just for that. Due to the cold temperature, we left the lake earlier than planned and went to a mall on the way back to the hotel. We searched for lunch at the mall but after going around and up and down, we eventually decided that we wanted to go back to the restaurant we went to the night before. Yes, it was that good! Even Miss Kiki ate 3 bowls of rice, and this is a girl who doesn't like rice that much even though she lives in Jakarta!
Not wanting to miss our train, we went to the station early and ended up waiting at the Hangzhou Railway Station for a while. This station seemed older and there weren't that many things to see. Anyway we finally boarded our high speed train and be on our way to Shanghai! I felt so happy to be in a nice train again I blinked back tears in my eyes. Some things we just took for granted. This train goes at up to 305 km/h and it was veeeery smooth. The bathroom was also very nice, I would say even better than the shinkansen's. The seats lean back much more than an airplane seat so it is quite comfortable.
We arrived in Shanghai just in time to celebrate new year's eve! Please stay tuned for the next post!
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